


One New Post: Missed Connection

by unbelieve



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bisexual Sokka (Avatar), Bisexual Suki (Avatar), F/M, is this a meet cute?? who's to say, it's based on a craigslist ad and that rly tells you everything you need to know honestly, it's not too bad in this one tho, mailee is there as a background relationship but I dont wanna spam that tag, this is always my interpretation and I need everyone to know that, this is real dumb but hopefully it's funny, yall who follow me know the drill the T is bc I can't stop swearing, yue isn't in this but sokka tries to wingman her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27151871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbelieve/pseuds/unbelieve
Summary: Ty Lee:Is this you?“GIRL THAT GOT HIT BY A CAR IN FRONT OF THE JASMINE DRAGON LAST NIGHT- M4FAge: 24. I was outside staring down a raccoon dog in my trash can. You were crossing the street and got hit by a car. You bounced off the hood and landed on your feet yelling something about being indestructible. The other night I almost got trapped in a dumpster because I was going after a pizza that I thought I wanted to take home with me. I’ve also recently slept on my kitchen floor. I think we’d be a good fit for each other. Move in with me? Let’s get married?”Suki:yeahSuki:that’s me.
Relationships: Sokka/Suki (Avatar)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 85





	One New Post: Missed Connection

**Author's Note:**

> The ad in this is based almost word for word on arguably the world's best Craigslist ad, the spirit of which possessed me until I wrote this fic.

**Ty Lee:** So Suki  
**Ty Lee:** You know how sometimes I look at the missed connections boards to see if anyone finds love?

 **Suki:** yes?

 **Ty Lee:** Um  
**Ty Lee:** Is this you?

“ **GIRL THAT GOT HIT BY A CAR IN FRONT OF THE JASMINE DRAGON LAST NIGHT- M4F**

Age: 24. I was outside staring down a raccoon dog in my trash can. You were crossing the street and got hit by a car. You bounced off the hood and landed on your feet yelling something about being indestructible. The other night I almost got trapped in a dumpster because I was going after a pizza that I thought I wanted to take home with me. I’ve also recently slept on my kitchen floor. I think we’d be a good fit for each other. Move in with me? Let’s get married?”

Suki places her head in her hands. “Oh my god.” 

She’d been two blocks from her apartment at that point, and had convinced her friends she was sober enough to make it the last little bit alone. It hadn’t really worked out in her favor, but she hadn’t thought anyone had _seen it._ She’d told Mai and Ty Lee, because she’d had to explain why lightly bumping the counter with her hip at their apartment two days later had warranted that much swearing, but other than that she’d thought she’d gotten away mostly unscathed. She also doesn’t necessarily remember yelling, but she can’t pretend it’s not a very real possibility. Not one of her greatest moments. _Really_ not one of her greatest moments. 

**Suki:** yeah  
**Suki:** that’s me.

 **Ty Lee:** Do you want me to write him back for you?

 **Suki:** do I have to write him back at all?

 **Ty Lee:** You don’t have to go out with him or anything, just tell him you saw it! At least then bystanders like me get some closure

 **Suki:** fine  
**Suki:** …it would be kind of funny if I went on a date with him though

 **Ty Lee:** I mean, if you really want to, but I’d feel bad if he was creepy.

 **Suki:** if he’s creepy i’ll leave, i’m not gonna meet him in a dark alley

 **Ty Lee:** Ok ok fair, what do you wanna say?

 **Suki:** send me the post, I’ll do it myself

Ty Lee sends the listing, and Suki clicks “reply.” For a moment, she just sits there staring at the screen, because this is so massively stupid that she can’t believe she’s actually doing it. As stupid as the whole thing is, though, it’s been a while since anything particularly interesting had happened to her, other than getting hit by a car and yelling at it, apparently. Finally, she types, “I’m the person from your post. Are you free Friday at 7? I can meet you at Bottega and we can get non-dumpster pizza.”

She clicks off the page and goes back to checking emails, but the “ding!” of a response comes through much sooner than she’d anticipated. “I didn’t think anyone actually read these!! Figured I’d shoot my shot but I didn’t actually expect it to go anywhere (I’m also not very good at sports). I’ll see you at 7 on Friday!”

It seems so genuinely excited that she almost feels bad, but she can’t expect much from a guy posting on missed connections boards on the same website where people advertise phones with shattered screens as “working condition.” Either way, though, they have a date set, and she picks up her phone to text Ty Lee back.

 **Suki:** alright, I’m meeting up with him on friday.  
**Suki:** we can hang out after it, i can’t imagine I’ll wanna stick around more than an hour and we can talk shit

 **Ty Lee:** Okay!!  
**Ty Lee:** Maybe he’ll be nice?

 **Suki:** dumpster pizza.

 **Ty Lee:** Fair enough

* * *

Friday rolls around, and Suki, wondering why exactly she agreed to this, shows up to the restaurant a little before seven. There’s a guy standing out front, about the right age and clearly looking for someone, and, okay, if this is him he’s actually kind of cute. A little taller than her, dark hair tied back to reveal an array of black and silver earrings, and either he has the fashion sense to know that the color blue he’s wearing perfectly complements the brown of his skin, or he’d paid attention when someone had told him that. _Slept on his kitchen floor,_ she reminds herself, because she’s not ready to get optimistic about this.

“Dumpster Pizza Guy?” she says when she gets closer. 

He turns, grinning. “The very one. Indestructible Woman, I presume?” 

“That’s me.”

He opens the door, ushering her in with a flourish, the whole thing just on the border between funny and embarrassing. If first impressions are anything to go off of, this could either be fun, or it could be something she needs to escape from in the next fifteen minutes. Either way, it doesn’t seem like it’ll be boring.

“So what’s your name? I can’t exactly keep calling you Dumpster Pizza Guy,” Suki says as they get in line, which draws a look from the person in front of them. 

“Sokka. You?”

“Suki.” 

“Nice to actually meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” Suki says, although the jury’s still out. She turns to study the menu, just to save them from trying to make small talk in the noise of the line. They place their orders and collect their slices from the counter, and Suki insists on paying. She’s the one who’d asked him, technically, and she’s also the one who’s most likely going to use him as shit-talking fodder later. 

They scout out a table, and as they slide into the booth, she says, “Look, I feel like I should be up front with you on this. I’m mostly just here because I thought it’d be a good story later.”

He says, “Guess I’ll just have to make a good impression if I’m gonna be a main character, then,” with a smile, which is gracious enough that Suki is inclined to give him half a chance. Only half, though. This is still the same guy who thought putting that he almost got stuck in a dumpster and slept on his kitchen floor was a good tactic to get her to reply (although she _had_ replied, hadn’t she?). 

“I think it’s possible. I just figured I’d let you know, so we didn’t have different expectations of this or anything. I don’t even usually check sites like that- my friend does, but only because she’s a hopeless romantic- but I thought it could be funny.”

“Honestly? I probably would’ve done the same thing. That’s not gonna stop me from trying to make a good impression or anything, but that’s just because I need people to like me.”

Suki laughs a little at that, despite herself. “As long as we’re on the same page.”

“Oh yeah. All good,” he says, and if that’s disingenuous at all, he’s doing a great job of hiding it. “Assuming you’re sticking around for a little while, though, dare I ask what led to you getting hit by a car outside my apartment?”

“Given that I have a lot of questions for you based on your post? Sure.”

“Yeah, I feel like that’s fair.”

“I had the weekend off, which is pretty rare, so my friends and I went out to a couple bars. It wasn’t super late and I felt like I was pretty sober by that point, so we split up a couple blocks from my apartment so they didn’t have to go out of their way. Thing is, because of the way my schedule works, I hadn’t gone out in forever, so my tolerance went to hell and I misjudged. Like, you know when it’s not until something happens that you’re like, oh wait, I’m _very_ not sober?”

“I’m familiar, yeah,” Sokka says, with the air of someone remembering a formative incident.

“Unfortunately the _something_ that happened was me not quite gauging distance right and getting hit by a car. Didn’t really hurt at the time, but I think that was the alcohol.”

“How bad did it hurt when you were sober?”

“I mean, my whole hip is bruised. It’s not pretty.”

“At least it wasn’t worse?” Sokka says, voice tipping it up like a question. 

“Definitely. Very stupid and not an experience I ever want to have again, but not life-ruining.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I would’ve at least called you an ambulance.”

Suki snorts. “Good to know you wouldn’t have left me bleeding on the side of the road.”

“Of course not, I’m a gentleman,” he says, sipping his drink. “So, wait, what do you do? You said you work a lot of weekends.”

“I work in sports med, over at the university.”

“Oh, sick. What sports?”

“A lot of the women’s ones. Volleyball, gymnastics, and women’s soccer are my main teams, but I cover for other ones a lot.”

“That’s super cool.”

“I like it a lot, even though the schedule can be insane. The kids are… I mean, university kids can be so stupid, but I love them.”

“Yeah, I believe it. I know what my friends and I were like, so…”

Suki decides not to mention that that doesn’t entirely seem to be a thing of the past for him, because she’s trying very hard not to be mean. He hadn’t made fun of her for being drunk enough to get hit by a car, either, so instead she says, “What do you do now?”

“I’m a mechanical engineer.”

Suki raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yes, really. Why is that- oh. Yeah, I can see how my original post wouldn’t give off that vibe.”

“It really doesn’t. I’d think a mechanical engineer would understand the physics at play when it comes to, like, not getting stuck in a dumpster.”

“How do you think I got back out of the dumpster?”

“Okay, but you were still in there in the first place. And if I’m remembering your description right, you decided you didn’t even want the pizza anyway?”

“The idea of dumpster pizza and the reality of dumpster pizza are two vastly different things, as it turns out.”

“You should put that on a shirt.”

“You know what? I might,” he says, expression too thoughtful for it to be entirely a joke.

“I feel like I should get a cut of the profits if you do.”

“Oh, absolutely. Thirty percent?”

“Sixty, minimum. I suggested the idea.”

“Yeah, but I was the one who said it. Forty.”

“I’d be willing to settle on fifty. Make it an even venture and all.”

“Deal,” Sokka says, reaching across the table. Suki shakes his hand with mock gravity. 

“So that’s the pizza thing, should I ask why you’ve recently slept on the kitchen floor?”

“I got tired,” he says, which clarifies absolutely nothing.

“And you didn’t just… go to bed? Or the couch at least?”

“I was trying to decide on something to eat, and all of a sudden I was like, ‘Wow, I’m exhausted. I’ll just lay on the ground for a minute, and then I’ll figure out dinner,’ and then it was six hours later.”

“That’s somehow much more mundane than I expected, and I think that makes it worse.”

“Hey, I never claimed it was an exciting story.” 

It’s weird how well the conversation flows from there. Sokka’s easy to talk to, moreso than some people she’s known for years. They agree on the important things (Suki has never believed in the whole “don’t talk politics on a first date” idea), but it also turns out they have equally strong opinions on the stupid things, because he holds his own when they get into a semi-jokingly heated debate about film that accidentally shifts into a ranking of every Godzilla movie. 

Suki intends to continue arguing that ranking _King Kong vs. Godzilla_ above _Terror of MechaGodzilla_ is ridiculous, actually, but then her phone buzzes in her pocket and she abruptly remembers that she’d planned to be out of here long before now. She has three missed calls, one from Mai and two from Ty Lee, and their group chat has been lighting up as well. She scrolls through the early ones, mostly just “Are you good?” and “this random internet guy isn’t a murderer right” and “Are you coming over soon??” then pauses as the tone becomes more urgent. 

**Ty Lee:** Write back so we know dumpster pizza guy didn’t kill you!!!

 **Mai:** seriously, text back in the next twenty minutes or we’re coming to rescue you

 **Ty Lee:** She’s already pulling knives out of drawers  
**Ty Lee:** I didn’t know we had knives in some of these drawers!!

Suki glances up at Sokka. “Sorry, I’m not ignoring you, my friends just wanna make sure I’m not dead.”

“I don’t think I’m _that_ boring,” Sokka says, but then adds, “No, go for it.”

 **Suki:** not dead, still at dinner

 **Ty Lee:** Still?????

 **Suki:** i think it accidentally became a real date

 **Mai:** please tell me you didn’t lower your standards this much

 **Suki:** he’s actually rly nice and not as much of a dumbass as the post made him out to be

 **Mai:** i don’t see how that could be a misrepresentation 

**Suki:** I’ll tell you guys about it later ok 

Suki sets her phone aside. “Sorry. My best friends are a goth lesbian with knives and a pastel lesbian who’s not super into knives but is equally dangerous, so I had to call them off.”

“I’d hate to anger the lesbians.”

“Those sound like the words of a guy who’s angered lesbians before.”

“Me and my ex broke up mid-high school when she realized she was a lesbian, and we’re still really good friends and she’s absolutely the best, but like… she’s yelled at me a couple times. She’s single, though, in case either of your friends are looking.”

“No, they’re very much dating each other, but it’s nice that you were trying to wingman.”

“Yeah, well, intracommunity solidarity and all,” Sokka says, and, sure, the constellation of ear piercings had already given off the aura of someone who wasn’t straight (Suki should know, half of them match hers), but it’s nice to get some kind of confirmation.

“Oh, thank god, I can’t imagine accidentally being on a date with a straight person,” she says, and he gives her a wide grin that she kind of thinks she’s rapidly becoming fond of.

“The horror of it all.”

“Honestly.”

They talk for a little while longer, but it starts getting crowded, probably as the nearby movie theater empties out, and they surrender their table to a couple of weary-looking parents with twins. Sokka opens the door for her again, the flourish a little more dramatic this time, and she thinks she’s settled on “embarrassing but endearing” as a descriptor.

“So, I don’t wanna make assumptions or anything,” he says, as they hover on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, “but given that you’ve stayed this long, can I get your number?”

“Yeah, you can,” Suki says, and she’s surprised at how easy that decision is. He types something into his phone and passes it over, and Suki can’t help but laugh a little when she sees he’s already named her contact “Indestructible Woman.” She wouldn’t have expected anything else, really, and when he texts her a smiley emoji back, she dutifully saves his number as “Dumpster Pizza Guy.”

“It was really nice to see you. Again, I guess. You know what I mean.”

Suki rolls her eyes at that, but stretches up to kiss him on the cheek. “I had a good time. I’ll text you.”

“Let me know when you get home safe?” 

“I will,” she says, and then, because she can’t help herself, she adds, “I know your post said something about moving in with you and getting married, but let’s see how a second date goes before that, yeah?”

(Maybe he’d been a little bit right, but when they move in together two years later, his contact name is unchanged in her phone except for an added heart. He doesn’t get to win them all.)

**Author's Note:**

> I know there's a pizza chain called Jet's Pizza and I wanted to do something with that joke but it's apparently "Detroit style" and both Suki and I have too much self respect for that.
> 
> If you're reading this have a great day I owe you my life


End file.
